Hotz lawyer: PS3 hacking case over, DMCA and IP abuse live on

Sony vs. Hotz is over, but the issues that spawned it are very much alive. …

The legal action between Sony and George Hotz has come to a close, with both sides seemingly happy with the results. Sony has Hotz agreeing not to do bad things to its hardware, and Hotz gets to be left alone and continue with his life. Neither side has admitted any liability in the matter, and things seemed to have worked out... for the best?

Ars Technica spoke with Yasha Heidari, one of Hotz's lawyers, who said the most important thing to take from this case is a knowledge of how large companies strong-arm their opponents when it comes to copyright issues and the DMCA, and to be aware of your rights. The best way to fight back? Don't give companies who do these things your money. The conversation was enlightening on a number of levels.

According to the settlement agreement, Hotz will not be "engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the law," nor will he be "engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the terms of any SCEA or SCEA AFFILIATES' license agreement or terms of use applicable to that SONY PRODUCT, whether or not Hotz has accepted such agreement or terms of use."

The terms of the agreement are listed in detail, and they essentially boil down to the fact that Hotz will not work to get around any Sony encryption, nor will he help others do so in any way. What's odd about this wording is that Hotz has agreed not to use the hardware in any unauthorized way, while Sony did not get a chance to prove that the original charges constituted unauthorized use under the DMCA. The terms used in the agreement were under contention during the case, and those issues were never settled in a legal setting. So the question of what a PS3 owner can legally do with the console she legally acquired is still an open one.

It would have been a long, expensive fight

While many people are disappointed that the case didn't result in precedent-setting vindication for Hotz, Heidari is sympathetic to the decision to settle. "It's easy for someone to stand on the sidelines and want someone else to spend the next five years fighting for something, but once you're in the fight, and you're being called 24/7 and you can't do anything without facing public scrutiny, and it's having tangible effects on your personal life, I think people think differently about it," he told Ars. "People don't remember that George is only 21, and he's fighting a multibillion dollar corporation. It's a hard fight for anyone, much less a single individual."

The other issue is that Sony was more or less silent during the case, while Hotz and his team were available for interviews, helping the press with coverage. "I'm not sure I'd say it helped the case, but that's one of the most significant things I was trying to accomplish with this case, which is to get these issues into the public light," Heidari explained. "I believe it's very important, when it comes to IP issues, to have the public discourse focus on what's taking place."

One of the things Heidari thought it was important to share was the strong-arm tactics companies like Sony use when they invoke the DMCA: seizing property, subpoenaing personal records from companies such as Google and PayPal, and even utilizing the police to invade people's homes in other countries. "Being forced to defend a lawsuit across the country is a big issue for everyone. My client had no notion he would face a legal battle in California," Heidari said. The issue is that people just click accept on online agreements or click that they agree, and suddenly they're facing legal battles across state lines.

Heidari told Ars that he sees a danger in the expansion of intellectual property laws, which were originally meant to foster the growth of original thought. "We have to ask ourselves if [copyright law is] actually promoting the arts and sciences. I believe that it's not. You have to ask yourself if society, in the end, is benefiting from people like George Hotz, prodigies and geniuses who are making creative technologies and innovations. Are there benefits from people like George being sued?" He brought up cases where companies sue people like Hotz and then try to recruit those like him or benefit from their work.

First, be aware. Second, vote with your dollar

"With the current IP laws and the DMCA, end users and consumers are the losers and will continue to be the losers until we pass some effective reforms on these subjects," Heidari said. "These lawsuits happen every day. People are dragged across the country every day. People are having to fight through interpretations of the DMCA every day." It's his belief that this will continue to happen until there is some change in the law, or a larger public outcry.

"The very first thing is to get this into the public discourse, to have people speak about it and have people learn about their rights. If people aren't talking about it and people don't know, it flies under the radar until they're sued." The next step is tricker: putting pressure on lawmakers and promoting reforms in the law, and then having customers vote with their wallets and punish companies who treat their users in ways they don't support. "That's the best way people can send a message saying they don't support a company's actions."

So who won?

Well, no one, unless you count Hotz not getting ground under Sony's boot a "win." Hotz has agreed to not do the things he claimed he never did, based on wording that was under some contention. The stipulation limits his work on Sony's hardware in a number of ways, and Sony was able to send a clear signal that it is willing and able to attack those who it feels compromise its hardware.

Neither side said uncle, but in the end George Hotz is able to walk away knowing that while he may not have wrestled the giant to the ground, he at least gave as good as he got. For a 21 year-old hacker going against a multinational corporation, that's no small thing.

For now, I hope you will join me in putting the popcorn down, if only for a moment.

So the lesson here seems to be: "If the corporations are coming after you you better pay them their hush money, because if you don't they will use their advantage over you to make your life a waking nightmare. You can't win so pay up."

I understand why he settled and agree that if it were me I would have too. Still it doesn't make the overall situation anywhere near fair. It's nothing but legalized extortion and making examples of select people. It is like being ruled by the mob....

So the lesson here seems to be: "If the corporations are coming after you you better pay them their hush money, because if you don't they will use their advantage over you to make your life a waking nightmare. You can't win so pay up."

I understand why he settled and agree that if it were me I would have too. Still it doesn't make the overall situation anywhere near fair. It's nothing but legalized extortion and making examples of select people. It is like being ruled by the mob....

Well now that we know it can be done...who is stopping someone else from hacking the PS3? Someone who actually distributes information/tools to hack it anonymously?

Seems like delaying the inevitable...

There are hundreds of developers actively hacking the PS3. Everyone still has access to the original tools and new ones are being developed every day. Its been 4 - 5 months before Hotz found the key (or released them, I suspect he's had them much longer). The amount of tools and software and new hacks that have come out since are staggering...

So the settlement was basically a more grandiose cease and desist arrangement? I tend to think monetary payment when I hear the word settlement.

Settlement just means they came to an agreement without a judge forcing it down anyone's throats. This is kind of a "If you stay on your side, I'll stay on mine" agreement than a "we'll forget whatever you did for $XXX.XX" which I would say means that Sony realized they were barking up a pretty tall tree. That could just be wishful thinking though.

I still think the worst part of this is that the copyright owners come down on relatively law abiding citizens like a ton of bricks, while the real criminals remain free to pursue their criminal enterprises. Regardless of whether you think George's actions were right or wrong, he's basically a regular citizen - works, goes to school, pays taxes, etc. He was there for Sony to sue, operating under his real name and with real contact information available, and not living on the proceeds of illegal activity.

On the other hand, the guys who run illegal factories turning out millions of counterfeit games, DVDs, or whatever generally go free. Sony is pursuing regular people like Hotz, who almost surely lost money on this whole venture, while seemingly not even attempting to pursue the acutal criminal violators who are driving around in Bentleys.

So the settlement was basically a more grandiose cease and desist arrangement? I tend to think monetary payment when I hear the word settlement.

Settlement just means they came to an agreement without a judge forcing it down anyone's throats. This is kind of a "If you stay on your side, I'll stay on mine" agreement than a "we'll forget whatever you did for $XXX.XX" which I would say means that Sony realized they were barking up a pretty tall tree. That could just be wishful thinking though.

Settlements just typically end up with money exchanging hands (as far as public trails like this go), but you're right that it's not the only way a settlement can be reached.

Sony most likely realized that there was a very real possibility that they could lose, and George realized that there was a very realistic possibility that he would go bankrupt in the process regardless of the outcome.

"It's easy for someone to stand on the sidelines and want someone else to spend the next five years fighting for something, but once you're in the fight, and you're being called 24/7 and you can't do anything without facing public scrutiny, and it's having tangible effects on your personal life, I think people think differently about it."

This is certainly true. I don't blame Hotz in the least for taking the settlement route, but at the same time, it is disappointing that we don't get a clarification on the legal issues involved. It's just a shame that it's going to take take a protracted legal battle that's probably going to ruin a good portion of someone's life in order to get that clarity.

Well, think about it. They have a huge, drawn-out court battle. Even if Sony won, what would they get, exactly? A few million dollars? Some legal precedent? What business sense does that make?

The cat's out of the bag already, it's not like they can plug up the leak and go back to the old glory days when there was no PS3 piracy. I suppose the only thing is that the guy who'll start trying to crack the PS4 might not be deterred by Sony's legal team since he knew that they settled with the guy who cracked the PS3.

I used to love Sony as a company. Sony was once a pioneer in the electronics industry.

The founders of Sony got their start by building shortwave radio conversion kits in WWII, so people stuck without information in war-torn Japan could get news from International sources. Later, Sony developed one of the first transistorized radios, the first consumer VCR's, and some of the earliest portable TV sets. In short, Sony was one of the most important electronics companies of the 20'th Century.

Now, they're throwing that legacy away with overpriced hardware and this kind of legal practice.

I used to love Sony as a company. Sony was once a pioneer in the electronics industry.

The founders of Sony got their start by building shortwave radio conversion kits in WWII, so people stuck without information in war-torn Japan could get news from International sources. Later, Sony developed one of the first transistorized radios, the first consumer VCR's, and some of the earliest portable TV sets. In short, Sony was one of the most important electronics companies of the 20'th Century.

Now, they're throwing that legacy away with overpriced hardware and this kind of legal practice.

What happened?

Corporate greed took over. It is easier to bribe politicians than to innovate, and it is also much more rewarding. Just look at this very case.

I used to love Sony as a company. Sony was once a pioneer in the electronics industry.

The founders of Sony got their start by building shortwave radio conversion kits in WWII, so people stuck without information in war-torn Japan could get news from International sources. Later, Sony developed one of the first transistorized radios, the first consumer VCR's, and some of the earliest portable TV sets. In short, Sony was one of the most important electronics companies of the 20'th Century.

Now, they're throwing that legacy away with overpriced hardware and this kind of legal practice.

What happened?

Digital Electronics, Compaq, Sun, Oracle, Dell, Microsoft... all of these started up as smart, nimble innovators before growing into behemoths that operated in fundamentally different ways. The first three are gone now, Oracle has become bloated in a way that makes Sony look like Facebook, and Dell and Microsoft are struggling with their roles in a changing technology industry.

I used to love Sony as a company. Sony was once a pioneer in the electronics industry.

The founders of Sony got their start by building shortwave radio conversion kits in WWII, so people stuck without information in war-torn Japan could get news from International sources. Later, Sony developed one of the first transistorized radios, the first consumer VCR's, and some of the earliest portable TV sets. In short, Sony was one of the most important electronics companies of the 20'th Century.

Now, they're throwing that legacy away with overpriced hardware and this kind of legal practice.

What happened?

Considering one of the reasons OtherOS was so popular was due to being able to get at Cell hardware at an incredibly low price, I don't buy the "overpriced" statement so much. Sony's stuff has never been cheap, they were never known for being a budget company on all the stuff you listed above.

I think you're looking back with rose tinted glasses, you're talking about the same Sony who refused to recognise the inventor of the Walkman and pay him royalties, then dragged him through the courts for years (before he won). And the same Sony that's pushing ahead storage formats, with DVD then Blu-ray.

the loss of any money i might of forked over for their hardware.i will not buy any hardware from sony.i am sure others will also be doing the same thing.won't be able to put them down but they will lose some money and they will lose more face.

Ars has become such a joke, never more evident in its coverage of this Geohot case.

Considering that Ars wrote (and Geohot spoke):"If Sony offered to settle, Hotz has terms in mind: he wants the OtherOS option back on the PlayStation 3, and he wants a public apology from Sony. He's also willing to trade "a legit path to homebrew for knowledge of how to stop new firmwares from being decrypted." With a fresh infusion of funding and the attention of the media, Sony may find a more formidable opponent in Hotz than it expected."

Clearly, this was not the out come. Geohot was the one who apologized; “It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier,”

The fact is, that for all this big talking douchebagery, he folded immediately, covering his own ass instead. All fine and good if he didn't talk like he was a Mhatma Gandhi for consumer rights. Ars coverage of this obvious attention-whore is quite frankly pathetic as the apologist article we see here.

I used to love Sony as a company. Sony was once a pioneer in the electronics industry.

The founders of Sony got their start by building shortwave radio conversion kits in WWII, so people stuck without information in war-torn Japan could get news from International sources. Later, Sony developed one of the first transistorized radios, the first consumer VCR's, and some of the earliest portable TV sets. In short, Sony was one of the most important electronics companies of the 20'th Century.

Now, they're throwing that legacy away with overpriced hardware and this kind of legal practice.

What happened?

Microsoft, Apple, Sony, and every other personal tech giant started out small. Now the personal tech leaders are huge companies and every stumble creates pressure to lower the stock price. They protect their turf because they are looked at every day by analysts who will shout doom and gloom if they have any problems. The pressure to perform for these companies is enormous and that mainly explains why they send out their attack lawyers.

Now is this good? I won't get into that. What I will say is that this is how big business is done. These are not charities and it was the same when IBM, Xerox, HP and Polaroid dominated in the old days imo.

And so what happens to all of the money people donated for his legal defense?

It's going to be donated to the EFF as per the agreement. http://www.eff.org/ EFF has helped many people in these cases where law and electronic rights have yet to meet.

Septimus Prime wrote:

Now Hotz is forbidden from messing with Xperia Play, NGP, and (eventually) PS4. Sounds like Sony won to me.

Not really, He's just forbidden to "engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the law," nor will he be "engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the terms of any SCEA or SCEA AFFILIATES" Concidering that there's been at least three different revisions of the TOS for PSN since the the news broke out, it looks like Sony finally got their bases covered for any future "issues", but would of still lost if this case went forward.

Hotz will do his own things, but he's most likely going to get very nice wads of cash for talking circuits and conferences.

The fact is, that for all this big talking douchebagery, he folded immediately, covering his own ass instead. All fine and good if he didn't talk like he was a Mhatma Gandhi for consumer rights. Ars coverage of this obvious attention-whore is quite frankly pathetic as the apologist article we see here.

Actually... I agree with this... No offense Ben but, considering the circumstances it does somewhat come off as an apology article for Hotz. It seems a lot like the settlement is a win for Sony in this case... Sony is a very large international corporation. I don't think they were looking for a monetary settlement from a 21 year old boy. They probably wanted to shut him down and send him back home with some kind of leverage to hold against him. Sony got that indeed!

Now Hotz is forbidden from messing with Xperia Play, NGP, and (eventually) PS4. Sounds like Sony won to me.

Not really, He's just forbidden to "engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the law," nor will he be "engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the terms of any SCEA or SCEA AFFILIATES" Concidering that there's been at least three different revisions of the TOS for PSN since the the news broke out, it looks like Sony finally got their bases covered for any future "issues", but would of still lost if this case went forward.

Hotz will do his own things, but he's most likely going to get very nice wads of cash for talking circuits and conferences.

That's what I'm saying. Instead of even risking a potential loss and perhaps even setting an unfavorable precedent (although, personally, I lean more toward Sony's side in this matter), Sony gets exactly what it wants in the settlement. Hotz stops his activities against not just PS3 but all Sony products (bonus!), and the settlement even contains a clause that specifies that if problems arise later, the complainant gets to choose jurisdiction. That's win-win-win for Sony.

I have two pieces of sony gear and they are probably the lasta blue ray player, and yes, a betamax for my even older collectionthey probably won't miss me as an individual I doubt I will miss them either.

Now Hotz is forbidden from messing with Xperia Play, NGP, and (eventually) PS4. Sounds like Sony won to me.

Not really, He's just forbidden to "engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the law," nor will he be "engaging in any unauthorized access to any SONY PRODUCT under the terms of any SCEA or SCEA AFFILIATES" Concidering that there's been at least three different revisions of the TOS for PSN since the the news broke out, it looks like Sony finally got their bases covered for any future "issues", but would of still lost if this case went forward.

Hotz will do his own things, but he's most likely going to get very nice wads of cash for talking circuits and conferences.

That's what I'm saying. Instead of even risking a potential loss and perhaps even setting an unfavorable precedent (although, personally, I lean more toward Sony's side in this matter), Sony gets exactly what it wants in the settlement. Hotz stops his activities against not just PS3 but all Sony products (bonus!), and the settlement even contains a clause that specifies that if problems arise later, the complainant gets to choose jurisdiction. That's win-win-win for Sony.

by getting him to agree to not do what he already claimed he didnt do in defense? Yes, great win - only if you think not settling would be have a bad outcome for sony...

You know the difference between the average person and large corporation? The average person doesn't pay thousands of dollars to campaign funds, or "consulting" fees. That is why DCMA exists. Because your politicians had sold out to the media companies.

You know the difference between the average person and large corporation? The average person doesn't pay thousands of dollars to campaign funds, or "consulting" fees. That is why DCMA exists. Because your politicians had sold out to the media companies.

Unfortunately you hit the nail on the head. The corruption of government is somewhat sickening, especially when governments like the US are seen as democratic. There is no democracy when corruption exists. No matter if it's legal or not, corruption is corruption.

What I find amusing is that they've said to Hotz to not hack their hardware. What's to stop him doing it and submitting the hacks via fellow hackers located in places where Sony doesn't have heavy lobbying? Well, nothing. Sucks to be a corporate machine with no power outside your bribe districts.